Prince Harry had to confront the emotional toll his mom Princess Diana's death took on him, revealing it negatively affected his personal and professional life when he ignored it.

The British royal was 12-years-old when his mom died in a car crash in 1997. The 32-year-old explains dealing with her death in front of the world proved to be too difficult, so he chose to shut down his emotions.

"My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand and refusing to ever think about my mom because why would that help," he said in an interview with the podcast Bryony Gordon's Mad World. "It's only going to make you sad. It's never going to bring her back."

Prince Harry admits he spent much of his twenties acting like everything was fine in his life, but at the urging of his older brother, Prince William, he began to work through his issues surrounding losing his mum.

"I can safely say that losing my mom at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well," he explains. "It was only three years ago that, from the support around and my brother and other people around who started to say, 'You need to deal with this. It's not normal to think that nothing's affecting you'."

He now feels he has handle on his issues.

"I started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, 'There is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with'," he continues.

"It's a fascinating process," he adds. "It's all part of a conversation, being able to talk to a parent or stranger or sibling or colleague."

And he is urging others to seek treatment when they feel they need it. He also stresses the importance of focusing on different interests or activities like exercising.

"Exercise really is the key," he continues. "Exercise is a simple solution. Instead of giving up, giving up, giving up. How about taking up?"

He also insists he wanted to speak out because of his status.

"What my mother believed in is if the fact that you are in a position of privilege or a position of responsibility and if you can put your name to something that you genuinely believe in...then you can smash any stigma you want," he says.